Adam Pendleton

Adam Pendleton uses historical and aesthetic content from texts and visual culture to critically examine the resonance of ideas from varied cultural perspectives, including social resistance movements and Dada, Minimalism, and Conceptualism.

Pendleton’s early period consisted of conceptually driven abstract paintings, often incorporating text. These early works caught the eye of gallerist Kazuko Miyamoto and she included one of his paintings in a summer group show at Gallery Onetwentyeight, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. An assistant to Sol LeWitt at the time, Miyamoto was visited by the artist, who took interest in Pendleton’s painting and agreed to trade one of his own pieces for it, making LeWitt one of Pendleton’s first collectors.

In 2004, Pendleton received his first one-artist exhibition, Being Here, at Wallspace Gallery, New York, which coincided with his first major group show, When Contemporary Art Speaks, at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indiana. In 2005, Pendleton had his first solo exhibition at Yvon Lambert, New York, presenting text-based screen print paintings that appropriated the writings of Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, among other poets, overlapping the critical use of language, conceptual art, and activism.